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In the latest skirmish in a year-and-a-half-long war for higher wages, fast food workers in the United States are staging a 150-city-wide protest — and taking their fight overseas.

Fast food workers in at least 33 countries and 80 cities on six continents will join their U.S.-based counterparts, for an expected 230 strikes and protests worldwide, from Seoul to San Salvador, from Brussels to Bangkok, from Auckland to Casablanca. Early in the day, the campaign’s website, FastFoodGlobal.org, showed photos of protesting workers in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Denmark and Bandung, Indonesia.

U.S. workers are demanding $15 an hour — about double the federal minimum wage — in cities such as Oakland, New York City and Raleigh, with first-time protests in Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia and Sacramento. Targeted establishments include McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC.

The coordinated protests were planned by an international labor federation comprised of 12 million workers across 126 countries. Called the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations, it met in New York last week to plan the protests.

In Mumbai, police withdrew permits at the last minute and threatened arrests, but workers continued their protest in front of a McDonald’s. (Courtesy Fast Food Global)

These strikes come amid a rising tide of calls to raise the minimum wage. Earlier this month Seattle mayor Ed Murray set for a plan to gradually boost the city’s minimum wage to $15 over three years for larger employers and seven years for smaller ones. It is widely expected to pass in coming weeks. Also, President Barack Obama has called for an increase in the federal minimum wage — to $10.10.

As fast food chains turned a deaf ear to protests and strikes, even as they expanded to 60 cities last year, organizers decided to internationalize their strategy. While in the U.S., labor unions have waning influence, those overseas have more power and can leverage it against multinational corporations that are drawing a greater source of revenue from abroad amidst weakening U.S. sales.

“Fast-food workers in many other parts of the world face the same corporate policies — low pay, no guaranteed hours and no benefits,” Mary KayMary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, told The New York Times.

But Scott DeFife, an executive vice president for the trade group National Restaurant Association, told the Times, “These are made-for-TV media moments — that’s pretty much it.” Indeed, efforts by the United Auto Workers to pressure Nissan by engaging unions in Japan have yielded little.

The New York Times reported that McDonald’s said its restaurants “offered competitive pay and benefits, with opportunities for advancement.” McDonald’s also released a statement: ‘This is an important discussion that needs to take into account the highly competitive nature of the industries that employ minimum-wage workers, as well as consumers and the thousands of small businesses which own and operate the vast majority of McDonald’s restaurants.’”

Michael Saltsman, research director of the Employment Policies Institute, called the workers’ demand for a $15-an-hour wage “outlandish.” A previous analysis by EPI found that if such an increase were instituted, half a million fast-food employees across the country could lose their jobs.

“Instead of securing higher paychecks, these union-backed protesters are going to send fast food employees straight to the unemployment line,” he said in a statement. “The idea that fast food restaurants can absorb a $15 wage mandate without consequence is so outlandish that even liberaleconomists acknowledge the costs.”

Julie Sherry, an organizer of the protests in the United Kingdom, which have taken place on a handful of occasions since January, projected that 100 workers would meet at 4pm London time (11am EST, to express solidarity with U.S. workers) at the McDonald’s in Trafalgar Square. They planned to carry signs declaring, “Fast Food Rights” and “Hungry for Justice” and to chant, “Zero Hours, No Way” — a reference to contracts in the UK that an estimated 90% of McDonald’s workers have signed that don’t guarantee them any hours but expect workers to come in whenever they are called.

“I’ve worked in situations like that,” says Sherry. “Maybe you get called in for a shift when you’ve had a day off, and you can’t do it, then the next week, the employer will respond by giving you four hours to send the message that they want you jump when they say jump.”

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